WeeklySA_AdminWAU20 CHAMPIONSHIPS: No limits for Nkoana and Walaza back on global track in Lima after Olympic silver
By Sports Reporter
He might already be an Olympic medallist, but Bradley Nkoana has no doubt as to the importance of the World Athletics U20 Championships Lima 24 as a key step in his career.
The men’s 100m final on Wednesday (28) will feature two Olympic medallists, as Nkoana lines up alongside his South African 4x100m teammate Bayanda Walaza, plus their fellow Olympian Puripol Boonson of Thailand.
In Paris earlier this month, Nkoana and Walaza teamed up with Akani Simbine and Shaun Maswanganyi to set an African record of 37.57 to secure 4x100m silver – the nation’s first ever Olympic medal in the event.
Now Nkoana and Walaza are on the hunt for age group honours, contesting the 100m final on Wednesday evening before returning to relay duty on Friday and, should all go to plan, on Saturday to race for further 4x100m medal success.
“Being here is a blessing and I feel like being at this competition is a milestone towards my career,” says Nkoana. “I was also in the 2022 edition (of the World U20 Championships), but unfortunately I didn’t get to run, I had an injury. But I had my coach there to tell me that there’s still a next one, so just prepare yourself, anything can happen. Being here at this championship, I’m really grateful for it. I’m looking to bring my A-game.”
The 19-year-old starts as the quickest in the 100m field, thanks to the national U20 record of 10.03 he set in La Chaux-de-Fonds last month, but just five thousandths of a second separates the five fastest in the field when it comes to PBs.
“I’m just preparing myself to show my best out there and compete with the guys,” Nkoana adds. “There are a lot of competitors here that are really strong and hopefully we give them a show.”
It was while playing with his friends as a child that Nkoana first noticed his speed.
“I remember when I was in grade four, I asked my coach if I could race with the senior guys and I actually won,” he reflects. “Since then, I thought: ‘Bradley, this is where you belong’.”
While he initially saw himself as a football player, it was his grandmother who encouraged Nkoana into athletics and she is the person the rising sprinter names as his inspiration. “My grandma really put me in line, saying: ‘Bradley, you are an athlete – this is you. If you don’t see it now, you’ll see it later’,” says Nkoana, whose mother used to do high jump and whose father played basketball. “I feel like that’s how my journey began.”
He met his current coach, Paul Gorries, while training in Pretoria and they now work together out of Potchefstroom, where his training group includes Benjamin Richardson, who claimed world U20 100m silver in 2021 and bronze in 2022.
“My coach not only nurtured my talent, but he prepared me for the world mentally, all those other things,” Nkoana says.
“The times he was hard on me, I never understood why, but as time goes on you understand that he’s hard on you because he sees something in you and you also have to dig deep to realise that I’m actually someone in this world. Him being in my life played a huge a role. He is the reason why I am here today.”
And Gorries can certainly speak from experience, as he won the world U20 200m title in Santiago de Chile in 2000 before a senior career that featured Commonwealth Games and African Championships medals.
“He is young, he is ambitious. He gets ahead of himself a little bit! So, it’s my job to just tone it down,” says Gorries. “But you know, at that age, when you are doing so well, I can relate.
“I have been in the sport for a long while so it’s my job, not just the coaching part, but to help them find a balance. The past two seasons it has been good, but like I always remind them, this is just the beginning, and if you don’t get things right now you might pay for it later on in your career.”
For Gorries, things have come full circle. “It is quite a journey, coaching now – I sometimes call it payback for the hard times I gave my coach, when they give it to me!” he laughs. “But it has been a good journey so far and hopefully this is the start of bigger and better things to come.”
Akani Simbine, Bradley Nkoana, Shaun Maswanganyi and Bayanda Walaza receive their Olympic medals in Paris
Akani Simbine, Bradley Nkoana, Shaun Maswanganyi and Bayanda Walaza receive their Olympic medals in Paris (© Mattia Ozbot)
The next step is Lima, where Nkoana will use the great experience he gained in being guided by Gorries to that Olympic 4x100m medal. While there is much to reflect on, one moment really stands out to the teenager.
“The look on Akani’s face when he realised that we actually brought a medal back for South Africa,” Nkoana says. “We know how much it means to him, to the team, to the country. We always knew that we had the guys to do it, but we just never had the resources or funds to put the team into a position where they could actually medal. Once this year they made a final decision that we’ll make camps and all of that, I feel like being out there with the guys and bonding is what I will cherish the most.”
That silver medal must now be one of Nkoana’s most prized possessions, so did he bring it with him to Lima?
“My agent told me not to bring it,” he smiles. “But every third day I ask my dad to take a picture!
“Being in Paris was just a good experience,” he adds. “I was able to handle myself well and coming into this championship, I feel like I am more ready, I am more focused, and I have high expectations of myself. My teammate Benjamin Richardson has set a high standard in our group and I am looking forward to also putting that high standard out as well.”
So Richardson has helped to inspire Nkoana, who in turn will surely be inspiring the next generation.
Speaking to the world’s press in Lima on the eve of the championships, Nkoana was asked by a member of the World Athletics Media Development Programme for the advice he would share with younger athletes who also have Olympic medal ambitions.
“Don’t limit yourself,” he replied. “Even if you feel like you are the youngest, to the world you are someone and you have value. So don’t limit yourself and anything is possible. Just run your heart out and have fun. That’s always important – just have fun.” He’s a brilliant boy!’
Described as raw by many who watch his unorthodox rocking sprinting technique, Bayanda Walaza’a coach Thabo Mathibedi insists that there is no reason to change his unique running style. Just three weeks after becoming the country’s first schoolboy to win an Olympic medal, South Africa’s golden boy has added more silverware to his swelling trophy cabinet.
Walaza celebrates after winning gold in Lima. Photo Credit: World Athletics.
This morning the 18-year-old became the fastest teenager on earth when he won the World Athletics U20 title in the Peruvian city of Lima in 10.19. Team SA came away with two medals as Walaza’s fellow Olympic 4x100m relay silver medalist Bradley Nkoana earned bronze (10.26) behind Thailnad’s Puripol Boonson (10.22).
“He’s a championships runner. He can take the punches. He can go six rounds in two days. We have been very fortunate to be injury free and healthy throughout the off-season after he ran 10.3 at the end of last year which put us in good shape for this year. The plan this year was the World Junior Championships and to win the SA U20 title. Our aim was to go the podium and win it! We wanted gold. The Olympics prepared him psychologically and emotionally. He’s a brilliant boy,” said Mathibedi.
Walaza with his signature flailing arms during at the Pilditch Stadium earlier this year where he ran a personal best 10.13. Photo Credit: Cecilia van Bers.
While some argue that the Curro Hazeldean matric learner could run even faster if his technique could be polished, Matebe says he sees no reason to do that for a man who has already a 10.13 personal best before the age of nineteen.
“I know people are complaining about the way he runs, but look at Michael Johnson’s running style of the great Haile Gebreselassie. We all have two legs and two arms but our anatomy is not the same.
I’m not going to change the way he runs, I’m going to make him much stronger with the very same running style because that’s how his brain processes things. That’s how his brain and his body communicate through his neurosystem,” he explained.
“Once he gets under pressure that’s when he starts swinging his arms all over the place. He’s trying to get himself out of that pressure. That’s his survival skill. We cannot change his survival skill. I’m not going to change it. That’s his survival mechanism.”
Sports: Briefs
SA PARALYMPICS TEAM UPDATE
Para-archer Shaun Anderson, in his own third Paralympics, opened Team SA’s campaign in Paris on Thursday and qualified for the final by delivering the best international performance of his career. The South African came up against the best archers in the world and qualified 9th.
In the 1/8 stage, he will meet Turkey’s Yigid Aydin, who placed 8th overall in qualifying. Also in early action on the opening day of competition, para-swimmer Nathan Hendricks who reached the final which will be swum later on Thursday. Swimming in the opening heat of the men’s S13 100m butterfly, he clocked 59.51sec.
That placed him joined sixth on the overall list in the final. There was another sport on the day one menu for Team SA, the individual competition where Karabo Morapedi and Elanza Jordaan made their Paralympic debuts. Morapedi lost his opening pool match, with Jordaan set for an evening debut. In the men’s 100m butterfly, S13 final, South Africa’s Nathan Hendricks finished eighth.
ONE PALESTINE
When athletes paraded down Paris’ Champs-Élysées for the opening ceremony of the Paralympics earlier this week, many did so as a cast of tens or even hundreds, shoulder to shoulder with their teammates and compatriots. But not Fadi Aldeeb. He is the only Paralympic athlete representing the Palestinian flag in Paris, and that honor, Aldeeb believes, has never felt more significant than now. He says that he feels “lucky” and “happy” to be part of the Games while the war between Israel and Hamas rages on in his homeland, despite also being burdened with a sense of duty. “It’s like too much stress, too much responsibility, really,” Aldeeb tells CNN Sport’s Don Riddell about his role as the sole Palestinian athlete at the Paralympics.
“There’s too much responsibility in this time … to show the people that you are from Palestine. This is the flag of Palestine – we are still alive, we are still here, and to show the people there is also life in Palestine.” The 39-year-old Aldeeb, a wheelchair basketball player originally from the Gaza Strip, will compete in shot put at the Paris Paralympics. The only other Palestinian representatives at the Games will be Aldeeb’s coach and the president of Palestine’s Paralympic committee.
ALTITUDE VERSUS ATTITUDE
Embracing his Mzansi heritage, New Zealand speedster Mark Tele’a can’t wait to tackle the Springboks on the Highveld this Saturday. Tele’a, who has a South African father and a Samoan mother, is in line to feature off the bench for the All Blacks in the first of two Tests over the coming weeks between the southern hemisphere arch-rivals.
The world champions host New Zealand in the Rugby Championship at Ellis Park in Johannesburg, before the rivalry makes its debut at Cape Town Stadium a week later. Blessed with uncanny footwork, a strong kicking game and safe pair of hands under the high ball, the evasive Tele’a first crossed swords with SA teams in 2019 after making his debut for the Blues in Super Rugby. Saturday’s clash will be the first time that the 13-capped winger tackles the Boks in the Republic, and speaking during an All Blacks conference this week, Tele’a highlighted the challenge that awaits while addressing his thoughts his SA roots.
McGLUWA JABS BSA
Chairman of the Portfolio Committee on Sport, Arts, and Culture Joseph McGluwa is calling for the department and Boxing South Africa (BSA) to act on the missing funds in the entity and, if possible, charge and arrest the people responsible. McGluwa was addressing the Portfolio Committee meeting in Parliament in Cape Town, where the new BSA board made its first appearance. He says it cannot be business as usual when BSA annual reports show irregular spending of R12 million over the years. McGluwa has given the Ministry and BSA 21 days to come back and report on who is going to be held responsible for this. “Who’s in jail, who’s going to jail? Who can we help? If we want to help, we would like to help you to send someone to jail. We will walk out of here as a committee with you to the police and open a docket.
The meeting was attended by the BSA board, led by its Chairperson, Sifiso Shongwe, and officials from the department. It was later joined by Minister Gayton McKenzie, who accounts to the Portfolio Committee.
